Asked about the strike that killed him, a senior adviser to the president's campaign suggests he should've "had a more responsible father."

Cornered by reporters with video cameras, former White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, a senior adviser to President Obama's reelection campaign, attempted to defend the kill list that the Obama Administration uses to determine whose body should next be blown apart. American drone strikes have resulted in hundreds of dead innocents in the last four years, even as the program has killed a number of high-level al Qaeda terrorists. There are two remarkable things about the ensuing exchange, which eventually turns into a discussion about a dead 16-year-old kid:

Gibbs replies that "When there are people who are trying to harm us, and have pledged to bring terror to these shores, we've taken that fight to them." Since the kill list itself is secret, there's no way to offer a specific counterexample. But we do know that U.S. drones are targeting people who've never pledged to carry out attacks in the United States. Take Pakistan, where the CIA kills some people without even knowing their identities. "As Obama nears the end of his term, officials said the kill list in Pakistan has slipped to fewer than 10 al-Qaeda targets, down from as many as two dozen," the Washington Post reports. "The agency now aims many of its Predator strikes at the Haqqani network, which has been blamed for attacks on U.S. forces in Afghanistan." The vast majority would never make their way to New York or Washington, D.C., and the Obama Administration would never agree to rules that permitted only the killing of threats to "the homeland."

The second notable statement concerns the killing of 16-year-old American citizen Abdulrahman al-Awlaki.

Tom Junod gives the back story:

He was the son of Anwar al-Awlaki, who was also born in America, who was also an American citizen, and who was killed by drone two weeks before his son was, along with another American citizen named Samir Khan. Of course, both Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan were, at the very least, traitors to their country -- they had both gone to Yemen and taken up with Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, and al-Awlaki had proven himself an expert inciter of those with murderous designs against America and Americans: the rare man of words who could be said to have a body count. When he was killed, on September 30, 2011, President Obama made a speech about it; a few months later, when the Obama administraton's public-relations campaign about its embrace of what has come to be called "targeted killing" reached its climax in a front-page story in the New York Times that presented the President of the United States as the last word in deciding who lives and who dies, he was quoted as saying that the decision to put Anwar al-Awlaki on the kill list -- and then to kill him -- was "an easy one." But Abdulrahman al-Awlaki wasn't on an American kill list.

The 16 y/o was not 'targeted'. He was associating with known terrorists and got killed because of his proximity to same. Only the radical righties keep flogging this meme.

She has a point though, a boots on the ground war is SO much less expensive, more effective, safer for US troops and far more precisely targeted than drones..

We've seen the proof of that with dubya's wars!

East Fishkill NY

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These right wing Hypocrites kill me......"what about the CHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIDREN??????"

Where were the when the untreated drug addict AWOL in Chief was scattering kids bodies all over Iraq looking for imaginary WMDs? Swilling beer and brainlessly chanting USA,USA,USA

Rosemont IL

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I love how exposing the truth makes the Left on SLS uncomfortable. They come out in droves to post all sorts of mockery in an attempt to deflect from their own hypocrisy. Love it!

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".. pounded it's scrawny chest, foamed at the mouth.."

Is this from some MTV survival-type show?

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You don't bring you kids around known terrorists...if you do and they get killed, that's on you. Bush and Cheney tortured PRISONERS, drone strikes happen in defcto battle fields, and anyone who can find their azz with both hands should understand the diference and the rules of engagement for each...spare us the faux outrage. Obama KILLS Terrorists, Bush does Coke line's off Bin Laden's sisters ass on the saudi royal families yacht

Rosemont IL

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Bump ba di bump...

This took place how long ago?

And now, everybody is up in arms?

Hmmm

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Maybe the left isn't falling for her silly attempt at being apalled.

Pittsburgh PA

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"I have a problem with the liberal contingent that pounded it's scrawny chest, foamed at the mouth, and proclaimed Cheney and Bush a war criminal, claiming that they are killing innocent people, Americans, Muslim etc... that it is a crime against humanity and they are the worst killing machine in human history."

This is exactly my point, but from the other side.

When the Republicans are in power, "deficits don't matter."

When the Republicans are in power, the wars are just, and the torture and extrajudicial killings are just fine.

When the Republicans are in power, individual mandates are perfectly acceptable.

Everything changes when a Democrat gets elected. All of a sudden these things are the pending end of the country as we knew it.

If Romney is elected, I expect deficits to be fine again, torture to be the law of the land, and the individual mandate will stand.

San Diego CA

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""Yes righties, the Sheriff IS a ni**er. "

Another liberal racist~~not surprised at all... "

It's a line from a movie, you uneducated pariah....

You really do have bad case of 'roid rage, don't you?

East Fishkill NY

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"His 'espionage answer' to Iran with the computer virus was also pure genius and the way conflict will be fought in the foreseeable future IMHO."

How right you are. Researchers at Boeing's Phantom Works succeeded last week when tests of their new weapon proved it to be even more potent than expected. They call it the Counter-electronics High-powered Advanced Missile Project, or CHAMP. The tests in Utah had the missile buzzing test structures full of electronics and cameras. The idea is that targeting these buildings with an intense burst of microwave radiation would knock out any electronically-controlled systems within. And that's what happened — in spades. The CHAMP worked so well that even the cameras set up to record the effects inside the buildings were shut down. Such a weapon would be invaluable against enemy infrastructure like radar and missile launch sites.

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